What does an electronic open-air drug market have to do with bringing down dictators? Everything.

A case in which the FBI used questionable, possibly illegal tactics to bring down a man it charges is an Internet mega-drug dealer has compromised the safety of many people around the globe fighting for freedom against oppressive regimes.

To get its man, the FBI broke into what many believed was a secure Internet browser that allowed its users to remain anonymous. The browser, Tor, was used to hide Silk Road, a virtual open-air drug emporium — but it is also enables people to send information and organize resistance anonymously in places like China, Iran and Syria.

There are serious domestic implications, as well. If prosecutors prevail, it would set a precedent that would make it easier for the U.S. government and law enforcement to search and seize Americans’ digital assets. Even when they don’t have a warrant. Even when the assets are overseas.

An anti-government protester films with her iPad during an al-Wefaq rally in Sanabis, west of Manama, January 12, 2012. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed

The trial of Silk Road’s alleged mastermind began Jan 13. Most of the people selected for the jury have little working knowledge of the sophisticated technology at the heart of the trial. Because they don’t, they can’t understand what’s at stake.

On Oct. 1, 2013, federal agents arrested Ross Ulbricht in a San Francisco public library. The government charged him with starting up and running the website Silk Road, an online drug marketplace.

The FBI indictment charges Ulbricht with money laundering and computer hacking, in addition to drug trafficking. The bureau labels him a criminal kingpin and accuses him of being the online ringleader known as Dread Pirate Roberts. It alleges that Ulbricht made millions of dollars through illegal drug sales and hired assassins to protect his illicit empire. Ulbricht pleaded not guilty to all charges when his trial opened.

The FBI has built its case on a specific server in Iceland that hosted the Silk Road site. Bureau officials allege Ulbricht had rented the server and owned the site.

The FBI knows Ulbricht rented the server, however, because it hacked into it without a warrant. According to the bureau, agents typed random characters into the Silk Road login page until they spotted a malfunction that allowed them to trace the site’s IP address to the server in Iceland.

Which sounds a lot like hacking. If the FBI hacked a server in a foreign country without a warrant, it’s a clear violation of the law. It doesn’t matter if the hacking was carried out during the course of a criminal investigation. The FBI is bound by U.S. law, wherever it operates.

Man in front of on a display showing the word “cyber” in binary code, in picture illustration taken in Zenica, December 27, 2014. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

Ulbricht’s lawyers argued that the overseas warrantless hack violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens from unlawful search and seizure. Judge Katherine Forrest rejected this. For Ulbricht to claim a reasonable right to privacy, Forrest insisted, he first had to prove that he rented the Icelandic server.

The alleged drug kingpin was stuck. If he owned up to renting the server, the Fourth Amendment could indeed protect him. But he’d also be admitting a connection to the Silk Road.

Ulbricht’s lawyers refused to do so.

The FBI is now close to setting a precedent with far-reaching consequences. For it may make it possible for the U.S. government to seize a person’s digital assets without a warrant.

The Silk Road website had been able to dodge investigation for years because it used the software system Tor — which allows people to surf the Internet anonymously. The browser does this by routing the user’s information through several levels of encryption across random computers in its network. The U.S. Navy and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency created Tor as a means to protect classified information online.

For some people, as the FBI demonstrated, Tor is viewed largely as a service that drug dealers and child pornographers use to move product. But for millions of others, it means far more.

Tor helps keep dissidents and human-rights advocates safe around the world. Activists in Iran, China and Egypt use Tor to access blocked websites, such as Facebook, so they can criticize their government without fear of reprisal.

A protester reads from his iPad as demonstrators gather during a sit-in at Tahrir Square in Cairo, June 20, 2012. REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih

The penalty for speaking up in many of these countries is harsh. Authorities in Saudi Arabia, for example, sentenced blogger Raif Badawi to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes with a whip. His crime was insulting Islam in an online forum.

Tor has been used to protect people like Badawi. But the FBI has now cracked it open. If the bureau can break Tor, it’s only a matter of time before cyberagents in other countries can, too.

The Silk Road trial has made it harder to do illegal business online, yes. But it also has weakened dissident movements in countries with oppressive regimes. For millions of activists using Tor, the Internet is no longer safe.

Yet jurors in the Silk Road trial may have little notion about these larger issues. To avoid any bias, attorneys selected jurors with minimal knowledge of the technologies that are key to the case. When questioning potential jurors, for example, attorneys even excused people who read news online.

“What [the Tor browser] is, I think, is mumbo-jumbo to most people on the jury,” the judge told the attorneys in court on Jan. 14.

An anti-government protester wears a plastic bag on his head to protect against tear gas as he uses a tablet near the site of clashes between protesters and police in Bangkok, December 2, 2013. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

Though the trial had just started, proceedings are already confusing. Only two jurors are under the age of 40. One of them is an Internet technology professional. One older juror holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science.

Even so, explanations of computer jargon bogged down the trial’s opening days. The defense and the prosecution have had to take turns explaining how a forum post works; what a direct message is, and the purpose of Wikipedia.

So many Americans daily use computers but don’t understand how they work. We can all open a web browser — but most of us can’t tell an IP address from a shell command.

There will likely be more trials like Ulbricht’s involving new technology. Trials where attorneys will spend days explaining the basics to befuddled juries. These trials will set precedents with far-reaching consequences.

Sites like the Silk Road go down — but similar websites always return. Black markets persist because they fill a need. The precedents set during Ulbricht’s case will help law enforcement combat those sites in the future.

But in doing so, the FBI is harming the safety of millions who use the Internet for far more than talking to friends and reading the news. For them, the breach of Tor may be the difference between freedom and oppression.

To arrest one man ……is it worth trampling on the rights of hundreds or thousands in order to catch one man…..No…yet the FBI thinks it is able to do that just to arrest one man…..Should they trample the rights of others to catch that one man…..NO NO NO!!!!!.

The author apparently believes that if the US government refrains from hacking Tor due to constitutional concerns, repressive regimes around the world will do the same. This is an extremely naive view. While I agree that evidence from warrantless hacks should be excluded from our courts, I very much doubt that repressive regimes seeking to identify and punish dissidents will care what our courts do.

It’s even more naive of the author to think that if the FBI had not hacked Tor, then it would still be a secure means of being online. Does he seriously believe that DARPA can’t monitor traffic over a system it created?

You state: “If the FBI hacked a server in a foreign country without a warrant, it’s a clear violation of the law.”

Are you sure about that? As a criminal defense attorney for many years – I haven’t researched the issue, but am not sure that a US citizen has a right to privacy throughout the world – maybe that only extends to ownership within the US.

Other countries (think Switzerland) may guarantee a US citizen certain privacy rights – but the US Constitution does not on its face guarantee privacy throughout the world. I certainly understand the issue, and am not opposed – but I don’t think it is clear cut at this point in time. This may be in fact one of the issues that this case ultimately clarifies.

It’s hard to really know what to say about such a poorly thought out post. The FBI essentially kicked the tyres of web site, and it spewed forth details. If the FBI needed a warrant for every time they did that, or anything like it, they’d do very little else.

Now, Silk Road was a hidden site on Tor, a web site that is present only on the Tor network, and nowhere else. Most use of Tor is to access normal web sites through the Tor network, whereby it provides anonymity. At no point did the FBI circumvent Tor’s ability to grant anonymity. They only found where Silk Road was being hosted because the poor design of the software gave this information up. If it wasn’t for that, they’d still be looking for it.

The great irony here is that, in a post criticising the poor understanding of the court and jury of the implications case, the author has demonstrated his own lack of knowledge. Maybe he should have spent a little time listening to the technology explanations given by the defence and prosecution lawyers?

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